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Weekend Discussion Thread: Two Favorite Movies (one bad one good)Our pal MSTie suggests:
First question: St. Elmo’s Fire. What’s your pick? 67 Replies to “Weekend Discussion Thread: Two Favorite Movies (one bad one good)”Commenting at Satellite News
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I think any movie that’s entirely dialogue driven, is probably safe from Riffing. “12 Angry Men” and “Creation of the Humanoids” aren’t qualitatively similar, but they’re almost like filmed radio plays.
That one dude gives my scroll wheel quite the workout! (Technically my middle finger too!)
I would love to see “Spielberg’s A.I.” get riffed. That movie was so stupid and ridiculous, with plenty of riff fodder. “Twister” is another big budget movie that deserves riffing.
As for movies that shouldn’t be riffed… I don’t believe that a movie should be automatically exempt just because it’s a good movie and/or a classic. There are lots of movies that I love and respect but also enjoy riffing them myself.
On the other hand, some movies shouldn’t be riffed because it just wouldn’t work, such as dialogue-driven movies. Most comedies aren’t suitable for riffing either. Movies with a strong religious theme also would be difficult if not impossible to riff without being disrespectful and offensive. And a few movies are constructed in such a way that riffing becomes impractical.
First question: The 1988 remake of “The Blob.” The filmmakers’ overbearing sense of snide superiority over the original film flies in the face of their version’s cheesiness, what with its expensive-yet-fakey effects, cliched plot (complete with a new backstory for the Blob that’s completely stolen from “Alien”), dated synth score, and humorously on-the-nose characterizations and dialogue (at one point, the leather jacketed biker teen rebel lead character says out loud, “I have a problem with authority”). What we’re left with is a heartless, mean-spirited bloodbath whose lone reason for existence is to show off the 30-year advancements in (now-outpaced) effects technology, and normally, I wouldn’t endorse riffing such a joyless movie as this, but if they’d been able to cut around the extensive gore, it would’ve made for a hysterical Sci-Fi episode.
Second question: I’m sick of seeing people ask RiffTrax or any of the movie-riffing YouTube sites to do self-aware movies like “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” or “Killer Klowns from Outer Space.” I understand why those people want to see those movies riffed; they didn’t like them, and want to get back at them. Myself, I hate the Japanese movie “Hausu.” But it knows what it’s doing, and to riff it would be like riffing a mirror. You can’t make fun of something that knows it’s dumb.
And this is why we have to lock you in the basement whenever company arrives. :P
ONLY when company arrives? I mean, do we have to ever let him out? Just once I’d like to enjoy a meal in peace.
swear, not just a week ago, i had a dream that s12 came out suddenly without announcement/warning… and (oddly, specifically) s12-e02 – ep. 2 – was ‘airplane!’ and, in my dream, i was -offended- that they would dare riff such a comedy classic… offended that they would deign that it was ‘hackneyed/pasayed’ ’nuff that they had to re-comedy-fie it! what are the odds of that, with then the upcoming WDT… ;0
so… having established that as my baseline ‘offensive’ standard (no need to go sub “saving private ryan” or into holocost-era flims – ’nuff said)… dunno, what would be one i’d -like- to see (nay, hear) them do?? hmmm…
“freaks”?? nooo, no… that would also stray too far into potential ‘offensive’ territory… besides, even if they managed to play on the safe-side, it just wouldn’t be all that funny. that’s a ‘no-go’ territory one… like many of the classics, they are unassailable.
hmmm… “the right stuff”? humm, well… just wouldn’t be all that funnier than it already is, all its own. also, “unassailable”…
hmmm!! i like the “king kong” suggestion a bit; same with the original “invisible man”… they both have a good amount of that era’s scenery-chewing “gangster-style” talk… “now look, see!” (“yah, yah sure – i’m lookin’, so i’m see’in’!”…) and “why i oughta…!” with fists up (“oughta -what- ringo?? showin’ me yer rings?? c’maaann…!!”)
funny how a number of peeps’ #1’s are some peeps’ #2’s!! and vicey-versa!
dunno… i guess my #2 would be somewhere in the field of…
– “koyaanisqatisi” (and all “no dialog at all” sequels/related)
– “the atomic cafe” (and “the day after”, and all nuclearly challenging/related)
– “the cook, the thief, his wife, and her lover” (and “irreversible,” and all artistically super-humanly challengingly offensive/related)
”
– swimming to cambodia” (and all movies so dialog-heavy, or so dialog-inert/visual-humorous that there’s just no room to bother interplaying – “dinner with andre,” “barfly”, or any tati/kurosawa/anything that would play at your local arthouse-theater flick)
i suppose there’s a -lot- that i would ‘feel offended by’ if it were riffed, but only if it were in official mst3k canon – i s’pose the closest thing so far goes all the way back to s0, “hangar 18”!! ;0 but, it only got a mild tromping there. everything else since then’s been gravy. :)
p.s. “logan’s run” (and other schmaltzy 70s scifi like it) do totally deserve a nice, well-roasted toast upon the fires of mst3k! :)))) s12 or +++… onwards and upwards!!! :))
p.p.s. think it goes without saying, there’s just an obvious ‘mental limit’ we all place on what’s ‘mstie territory’; after all, would any of us -really- want to watch a riffed version of ‘the china syndrome’? ‘the day after’? ‘all the president’s men’? ‘the color purple’? … lots of open room, down at ‘the bottom of the barrel’, as it were…
Maybe stealing the only copy of “The Day the Clown Cried” and riffing it would be the most inappropriate riff you could do.
On one hand the Human Centipede movies deserve all the abuse they can get, but there’s no way I’m watching one again for any reason.
I whole heartedly endorse riffing Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind. Not only overrated and dumb but boring and pretentious.
I wish Hor-Rif-fic Productions would riff Nightmare on Elm St. and Hellraiser.
The riff for Alien doesn’t feature Mike, but it DOES feature Kevin and Bill. They do it as a duo. It’s in fairly regular rotation for me, at least a few times a year.
I stand corrected.
“Best Defense.” It’s (allegedly) a comedy, and those almost never work, but this one is so lame that it presents some great fodder to work with. Starring Dudley Moore as an engineer designing a tank, and Eddie Murphy driving the tank some years later. The book that it’s (very loosely) based on, “Easy and Hard Ways Out” followed roughly the same structure, but the movie pretty much threw out all the good parts and kept only the basic idea and a few one liners. The movie is a complete train wreck of jokes that don’t work, subplots that don’t make sense, and dialog with the polish of a cinder block wall. Some of the jokes are smirk-worthy if you live in southern California and work in the defense industry, but make no sense to normal people. It’s not “Catalina Caper,” but it has potential.
A movie that I particularly despised was “A Walk in the Clouds,” starring the ever-riffable Keanu Reeves. So many sappy and improbable scenes, it’s a ripe melon. There are a couple of decent scenes with Anthony Quinn they would have to work around.
The entire “Matrix” trilogy.
“2001”. If there was ever a movie that needed a chorus to (humorously) explain what’s going on, that’s the one.
I would like to see them take a shot at a musical, like “Evita” or “Les Miserables.” There’s just so much inherently silly about the form.
Don’t riff
“Forbidden Planet.” Yeah, it has some ’50s corn, but it deserves respect.
“Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” The remake, I mean. It showed that cornball horror could be turned into a great movie.
“Blade Runner”. If you want to see it wrecked by needless talking, just watch the cinematic version.
“Saving Private Ryan”. Where would you start?
Should Riff: It’s a tossup between Dimension 5 (Because the only thing more riffable than a goofy 60’s spy movie is a goofy 60’s spy movie that involves time travel and stars a bunch of guest actors from Star Trek and Odd Job from Goldfinger) and Golden Needles (Joe Don Baker *is* Joe Don Baker in a 70’s chopsocky flick about magical acupuncture needles)
Shouldn’t Riff: Cast a Deadly Spell or Tremors (though the latter may end up as a RiffTrax Live screening) Basically, any movies that are already fairly intelligent self-aware comedies don’t need a separate layer of riffing.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) is “cornball horror?”
1)
Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein
2)
Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein
There was nothing like Close Encounters at the time. Harshly judging by today’s standards is an injustice. When I was a kid I thought it was magical. Still love the hell out of it. Wouldn’t bothered with a riffed version. /2 cents
You’re right. Too harsh of an assessment. Although it still has much of the feel that pervaded the genre at the time.